


Soft and Starlit

by FoxyWolfMeerkat



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mentioned Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-15 17:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13035510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxyWolfMeerkat/pseuds/FoxyWolfMeerkat





	1. Soft

The soft rumble of the Normandy usually helped the crew get to sleep, Garrus included. Tonight though... The Turian was admittedly restless. He couldn't say exactly why. He didn't really feel troubled by the whole 'impending doom' of their suicide mission- Or maybe he did but it just wasn't that bad? The man clicked his mandibles unhappily and refocused on Shepard instead.

Humans were definitely something else. Shepard was even more something else.  
Humans were soft. They didn't have any plating, they reacted terribly to radiation in any noteworthy doses, and the hair! Hair was fucking weird, politely. Reaching out, Garrus lifted a bit of Shepard's red hair and let it fall again in strands. Strands was the right word right?  
He was pretty sure- His research had been... well more awkward than anything else. Garrus was not into humans. Except Lillian anyway. Lillian was a pretty name (very human) and Garrus sort of understood why she didn't use it more. It was formal, but not very commanding. Especially not when comparied with Shepard.  
He vaguely remembered Kaiden calling her by it a few times, along with a pet name... Lily. Garrus wondered if she'd mind him using it. He hadn't asked on account of things going smoothly. She really didn't need to think about him right now. After their encounter some weeks ago, which mostly involved Alenko shutting down any attempts at talking, Shepard had been pissy for a while. No need to remind and agitate her in case it was something the human man had come up with himself instead of a commonplace diminuative. 

Once all of her shoulder length hair was out of his hand again, Garrus rested it against her neck. Human skin was soft, but it wasn't just that. It was everywhere, but some places were softer than others. Slowly, not wanting to disturb the sleeping commander, he slid his hand over her shoulder and then even further down to her hips. Here she was really soft. The Turian was half tempted to squeeze but thought better of it. Human hips weren't as shapely as Turian hips were but... Damn, this had to be one of the things he did like about humans. Least, human females anyway. Males didn't have as much going on here as far as Garrus could tell. He... didn't really plan on finding out. This thing with Lillian had already been a crazy stretch.

She stirred for a split second and Garrus froze up. But she didn't wake up, not completely. Shepard's eyes stayed entirely closed while she turned around to face him straight on. Her forehead bumped against his chest lightly as she stilled again. The forehead that she'd once headbutted a Krogan with. No helmet. Everyone got a kick out of it. Garrus had even seen a few of the Cerberus crew reinacting it a few times, usually while also taking gratuitous liberties. Honestly, watching humans butt heads was hilarious. They really weren't built for it, but like hell did that stop them. That seemed to be true of a _lot_ of things humans did.

Maybe that's what was so incredible about Shepard. By nearly every standard he knew, she was not built for this. She needed tons of armor, extremely well refined biotic amps (he'd found out a bit about it from Alenko way back when, as well as Shepard herself, just how tricky things were for human biotics), was even more sensitive to the harsh elements of the universe than the average galactic species, and yet that didn't slow her down at all. She was smart about it of course, but it didn't stop her. She was afraid of very few things. The universe threw everything it had at her and she gave everything she had in her arsinal back, with a considerable helping of mercy and a smile.

Lillian Shepard was soft in more ways than one- and maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.


	2. Starlit

She couldn't sleep. Which happened sometimes. There were dozens of reasons for the restlessness, and figuring out which exactly it was this time really didn't interest Lillian that much. Instead she settled for pressing against another body and looking up.  
The addition of the window above her bed was probably- no easily, Shepard's favorite thing about this new Normandy. Having so much space to herself wasn't really a positive in any sense and she never seemed to be able to keep the fish alive... The water by itself was nice though, and having all of those silly model ships was certainly a cheery addition to an otherwise dreary situation. Nothing quite like the Reapers and the potential end of civilization as they knew it to dampen a person's mood.

It was the stars she liked the most. She enjoyed the front of the ship and the Observation Deck for the same reasons. Every little window out into the universe at large. It made her feel more at home. Reminded her of a dozen and some years aboard a number of different space stations all over, meeting more people than she could ever hope to remember; not unlike the stars. Innumerable.

Shepard minded where in her past she dwelled, it was far too easy to stumble onto negative times. It didn't always stop her from reminiscing. There were some very good times after all. Meetings, parties, victories, the occasional happy accident. In particular, out of the accidents, there was the time where she'd gotten separated from her parents and had somehow wound up shuttling to a largely Turian station. Having to stay for nearly a week, the seven year old had actually managed to get sort of popular among a few of the officers before things had finally been sorted out. Something about being her age but still knowing exactly how to be responsible with a gun- and gumption.

Said gumption never went away. And was still very popular with her human and non-human shipmates alike. Wrex was a fine example of her instinctive charisma. Especially through Vermire. Though she may have had a favorite when it came to those she'd impressed over these past few years especially. It still held true that it impressed at least a few Turians: one being in her bed at the moment, namely.  
He had reach, she had flexibility, both of them had fire enough to wash out suns by comparison.

Lily glanced at him, tearing off her lavender eyes off the stars passing above. Gently, she brushed her fingertips over the back of his neck and came to a stop when her nails pressed his fringe. The way Turians looked... she could see how some humans sometimes thought of dinosaurs. But his skin didn't quite have that scaly texture people seemed to expect. The plating wasn't like that either, harder and cooler than the softer parts of his body. His fringe rested somewhere between the two; stiff but not totally inflexible, not null of sensation but not terribly sensitive really either. She'd learned things she'd never even stopped to wonder about really and he probably had too.  
She considered asking him about it. Laughing about how utterly ridiculous biology could be. Always was really. But... Reapers did not scare her. Not by themselves. What they promised? The memory of the Normandy all but emptied of it's crew and the silence that brought, the creaking and burning wreckage of The Citadel, the rotted eeriness of Akuze-

There was that stumbling.

Lillian pressed her forehead against the broad plate spanning up Garrus' back, clutching at the rim of it to help brace herself. Slow deep breaths, maybe a little loud. Purposefully. She was alive, and hardly the only one. Pressed up against his back, she glanced up again at the stars. There was a universe of life- and monsters and death and quiet.  
Not the only one at all.  
Garrus shifted slightly. He didn't mind. He didn't, he understood. In an increasingly familiar move, he reached back and squeezed her thigh. A soft hum, almost but not really a purr, pulsed out from his throat. Sleepy. It wasn't perfect but it was something to anchor on. He didn't mind- he was here anyway was his reasoning. Right, that had been what he said...

Shepard wasn't sure when she would settle again, it could take minutes or hours. There was a ringing between her ears. However it wasn't getting any worse. Garrus offered just enough company. To draw her back to the present without rushing her. Whether he'd known this instinctively or if perhaps Thane had mentioned something to him wasn't known to her and she didn't entirely feel like asking. It was enough as it was. Particularly under the stars.


End file.
